Explorations of a die-hard dessertatarian

No, I don’t normally go for dessert after eating brunch, but I made an exception at Café Saint-Ex, named after The Little Prince author and aviator, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, after my dessert guide claimed that she didn’t care what I did, she was having dessert. I don’t back down on a dessert throw-down, plus I knew I was in good hands when I saw the dessert menu, which listed five unique-sounding desserts (not including the requisite ice cream and sorbet selections) and listed the pastry chef’s name at the bottom: Alison Reed. This lead me to believe that someone in the kitchen actually cares about sweets enough to put her name out there.

In his love letter to flying, Wind, Sand and Stars, Saint-Exupéry describes one of several desert crashes that he had. He and his navigator were dying of thirst and miraculously found an orange in their plane’s wreckage.

He wrote:

“Stretched out beside the fire I looked at the glowing fruit and said to myself that men did not know what an orange was. ‘Here we are, condemned to death,’ I said to myself, ‘and still the certainty of dying cannot compare with the pleasure I am feeling. The joy I take from this half of an orange which I am holding in my hand is one of the greatest joys I have ever known.”

I’m sure that he would have also enjoyed the Orange Ice Cream Sandwiches (with cinnamon chocolate sauce), which I chose in his honor:

The cookies had a wonderful buttery, oaty crunch, accompanied by the spike of orange zest. And what heaven to dip them into chocolate. I am quite a fan of the dipping dessert. You get to choose just how much sauce to use on each bite, you don’t have to worry about losing it to the open expanse of the plate, and you get to take your spoon and shamelessly eat the dredges yourself. The Raspberry Lemon Bread Pudding with white chocolate sauce and vanilla cream was surprisingly light with a sweet, lemony accent. The Nectarine Cobbler with basil ice cream was also delicious– how boring it would have been to use vanilla instead of basil ice cream. Being a part of the mint family, the basil was refreshing and perfectly balanced the cobbler’s richness.